Technique is like a toy given to a child. When the child
grows up, the toy is discarded. In the meantime technique is necessary in
order to develop patience and to refrain from dreaming about the
"spiritual experience." One's whole practice should be based on the
relationship between you and nowness.

You do not have to push yourself into the practice of
meditation but just let be. If you practice in this way, a feeling of space
and ventilation automatically comes, the expression of the Buddha-nature or
basic intelligence that is working its way through confusion.

Chogyam Trungpa - Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

There are many ways to explain meditation, what it is, what
it does, how it works. Meditation, it is said, is a way to evoke the
relaxation response. Meditation, others say, is a way to train and strengthen
awareness; a method for centering and focusing the self; a way to halt
constant verbal thinking and relax the bodymind; a technique for calming the
central nervous system; a way to relive stress, bolster self-esteem, reduce
anxiety, and alleviate depression.

All of those are true enough; meditation has been
clinically demonstrated to do all of those things. But I would like to
emphasize that meditation itself is, and always has been a spiritual practice.
Meditation, whether Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, or Muslim, was
invented as a way for the soul to venture inward, there ultimately to find a
supreme identity with Godhead. "The Kingdom of Heaven is within" -
and meditation, from the very beginning, has been the royal road to that
Kingdom. Whatever else it does, and it does many beneficial things, meditation
is first and foremost a search for the God within.

... Meditation is spiritual; prayer is religious. That is,
petitionary prayer, in which I ask God to give me a new car, help with my
promotion, etc., is religious; it simply wishes to bolster the little ego in
its wants and desires. Meditation, on the other hand, seeks to go beyond the
ego altogether, it asks nothing from God, real or imagined, but rather offers
itself up as a sacrifice toward a greater awareness.

Meditation, then, is not so much a part of this or that
particular religion, but rather part of the universal spiritual culture of all
human kind - an effort to bring awareness to bear on all aspects of life. It
is, in other words, part of what has been called the perennial philosophy.